A few years ago, it was a populist movement on the right, led by the amorphous Tea Party, that showed just how angry constituents were with their Republican representatives. That anger is still seething and shows up in the divide between Trump supporters and traditional Republicans of all stripes.

Today, we are seeing that same populist anger on the left, as all the identity-grievance groups the Democrats have mobilized for years have begun eating their own. It’s not surprising that, in an age when shouting beats quiet protests, students and teachers unions would try to impede speeches and school visits by conservative Betsy DeVos. What’s more surprising is to see Nancy Pelosi and even Barack Obama the subject of pushback.

We could see that shift in the Democratic Party in 2016 when Hillary Clinton had to disavow countless moderate successes in her husband’s administration, primarily on welfare reform and criminal justice. We saw it on the floor of the Democratic Convention when a mild pro-Israel resolution was boo’d. We saw it when it took a full-scale effort by all the party leaders to prevent Keith Ellison from becoming head of the Democratic National Committee. We saw it recently in San Francisco when Sen. Diane Feinstein had to retreat quickly after expressing a vague hope that Pres. Trump would do well in office.

We are continuing to see it as nurses in California protest any Democrats who won’t vote for a statewide single-payer system, at leftist demonstrations against Democratic leaders, and at speeches by people like former FBI leader James Comey, trying to explain his work on civil-rights and criminal-justice issues. The common theme: these people didn’t do enough to advance our progressive agenda.

They want single-payer health care, sanctuaries for illegal immigrants, free college tuition, and Trump out of office.

Expect more. People are angry, despite economic growth and very low unemployment, at least in the general population (though not among people with low skills). The Democratic Party has moved hard left, mobilized these supporters, and the intra-party competition for leadership gives politicians incentives to appease these angry voices, not quiet them.

In a stunning community meeting on Chicago’s South Side, protesting the lack of community benefits from the Obama Presidential Library, residents attacked Obama for “not doing enough for black people” and for “not being black enough.” His supporters’ defense for the last charge? He married a black woman and she will keep our racial interests in the forefront. That’s an amazing turn of events. (Link here)

Democratic leaders announced late Wednesday that they agreed with President Trump to pursue a legislative deal that would protect hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation and enact border security measures that don’t include building a physical wall. –Washington Post

Republican leaders are on the outside, looking in.

And some of Trump’s base is furious.

In a sign of the potential trouble for the president, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an immigration hard-liner and early Trump supporter, wrote that if reports of a potential immigration deal are accurate, the president’s “base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.” –Washington Post

Regional tensions have risen markedly since the reclusive North conducted its sixth, and by far its most powerful, nuclear test on Sept. 3.

The 15-member Security Council voted unanimously on a U.S.-drafted resolution and a new round of sanctions on Monday in response, banning North Korea’s textile exports that are the second largest only to coal and mineral, and capping fuel supplies.

The North reacted to the latest action by the Security Council, which had the backing of veto-holding China and Russia, by reiterating threats to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea. –Reuters

Comment: Meanwhile, there are reports North Korea is preparing another nuclear test.

Familiar names, great schools. They compete hard against each other and are not just tops in the US, they are tops in the world (along with Oxford and Cambridge)

Two Comments: First, students can get a great education at many schools. The important thing is to find one that “fits.” Fit depends on your needs, your interests, and your personality, as well as the school’s strengths and weaknesses and the niches it provides for students.

Second, I don’t see how you can say Harvard ranks above or below, say, Stanford or Chicago. I think you can say that some schools rank in the very top-tier and others are a half-step back. Even that depends on whether you are interested in biology or French literature.

The Marijuana Effective Drug Study Act of 2017 would streamline the process for approving research and increase the national marijuana quota for medical and scientific research. Marijuana has been shown to have potential health benefits such as treating seizures and managing pain. –The Verge

The reference is to Pres. Trump’s three-month deal with “Chuck and Nancy” (Schumer and Pelosi) to extend the US debt ceiling and provide relief funds for Hurricane Harvey. Republican lawmakers wanted a longer extension and are furious.

Comment: The headline is partly right when it says Trump is “bound to no party.” He is not bound to the R’s ideologically. But he is bound to them practically since the D’s don’t agree with him on most big issues, aside from infrastructure spending and trade protection.

Liberals should keep in mind an important constitutional principle: Immigration is supposed to be the province of Congress, not the executive. The belief that the president has ultimate immigration power can lead to terrible results — like Trump’s travel ban against six majority-Muslim countries, also powered by the mistaken idea that immigration policy should be set by executive order.

The Framers of the Constitution thought about immigration, and wanted Congress in charge. Article I, Section 8, which enumerates Congress’s authorities, confers the power “to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.” –Noah Feldman

Comment: Feldman is absolutely right. Trump’s threat to act if Congress does not is as lawless as Obama’s DACA action, which Obama himself had said would be unconstitutional before he did it anyway.

It is depressing to see people on all sides of the political spectrum so determined to get policy outcomes they desire that they ignore well-established constitutional safeguards.

The Democrats are united, so far. The Republicans are split, naturally.

Comment: Don’t know if the D’s will stick together if funding the wall is part of the ultimate deal.

Don’t know if the Congress can act on this at all.

If they don’t, it will be a problem for Pres. Trump to simply extend DACA because the original act by Pres. Obama won’t pass constitutional muster (as Obama himself noted for years before he actually did it).

If you live in a coastal city like New York, Boston or San Francisco, you know that the cost of housing has skyrocketed. This housing crisis did not happen by chance: Increasingly restrictive land-use regulations in the last half-century contributed to it.

But what appears to be several local housing crises is actually a much more alarming national crisis: Land-use restrictions are a significant drag on economic growth in the United States. –Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti, op-ed in the NYT

Comment: So obvious, even the NYT editorial page noticed, perhaps because New York City is one of the worst cities for housing restrictions.

Uncertain if they will ever discover which political party controls all those cities with heavy restrictions.

The Trump administration announced Tuesday it would begin to unwind an Obama-era program that allows younger undocumented immigrants to live in the country without fear of deportation, calling the program unconstitutional but offering a partial delay to give Congress a chance to address the issue.

The decision, after weeks of intense deliberation between President Trump and his top advisers, represents a blow to hundreds of thousands of immigrants known as “dreamers” who have lived in the country illegally since they were children. But it also allows the White House to shift some of the pressure and burden of determining their future onto Congress, setting up a public fight over their legal status that is likely to be waged for months. –Washington Post

The announcement was made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions:

He called it an “open-ended circumvention of immigration law through unconstitutional authority by the executive branch” and said the program was unlikely to withstand court scrutiny. –AG Jeff Sessions in WaPo

Congressional Republicans indicated Tuesday they will take up the Trump administration’s call to consider legislation to replace the Obama-era DACA program, though condemnation from Democrats over the decision to end it points to a heated battle ahead.

◆America’s universities deny students fair hears on sexual-assault allegations, according to new report(FIRE, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education)

Comment: The worthy effort to protect victims and ensure their rights has undercut the rights of those accused. This erosion began with orders from Washington bureaucrats during the Obama administration and has been carried out zealously on campus.

Fired FBI Director James Comey drafted a statement to announce the conclusion in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server before the FBI interviewed key witnesses, including Hillary Clinton herself, top Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee claim.

Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, reached that conclusion from transcripts of interviews with people close to Comey and provided by the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Counsel (OSC). Those transcripts, the Republicans said in a Thursday letter to current FBI Director Chris Wray, show Comey had already drafted a conclusion for his investigation before interviewing 17 key witnesses, including Clinton, and before the DOJ had reached immunity agreements with former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson. CBS News

McClatchy’s bureau in Washington, D.C., was reporting Thursday that President Donald Trump is expected to announce and end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era program that had temporarily deferred deportation of undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as children. –Austin Statesman

Attorneys General from several states were suing to end the program as an unconstitutional overreach of Pres. Obama’s authority, something Obama himself acknowledged before actually doing it. The AGs’ suit says DACA

confers eligibility for work authorization and lawful presence without any statutory authorization from Congress –quoted in Austin Statesman

Comment: The details of Trump’s policy are crucial, and we simply won’t know them until the White House issues its decision.

Here is what is most likely.

First, ending the program will mean stopping coverage for any new arrivals. They will simply be illegal immigrants (or undocumented, if you prefer), regardless of age.

Second, mass deportations of current DACA beneficiaries won’t happen.

Third, what is uncertain is whether DACA permissions to stay will renewed for current “dreamers.” Most likely, they will not. If so, then those people will lose DACA status at some future date. They will then be subject to deportation on a case-by-case basis, just as other illegal immigrants are.

Fourth, the status of Dreamers already in the US could be one of Trump’s bargaining chips in future negotiations about immigration reform and the wall.

would allow automakers to obtain exemptions to deploy up to 25,000 vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards in the first year, a cap that would rise to 100,000 vehicles annually over three years.–Reuters

Comment: The coming changes in transportation will be enormous, the biggest since the introduction of cars.

Take public transportation, for instance, where about three-quarters of the costs are wages, much of it for drivers (some for mechanics, who will still be needed). The cost of bus drivers is why the vehicles are large; you need fewer drivers that way. If driver wages are eliminated, the buses can be smaller and arrive more frequently. They can also serve less traveled routes.

Ultimately, the biggest question is whether lots of drivers will switch out of car ownership and take self-driving Ubers in urban areas.

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Hat tip to Clarice Feldmanfor the text of the Grassley-Graham memo and to Tom Elia for highlighting this latest Comey contretemps.